Back in April in the city of Naples, Italy, the Napoli Comicon opened it’s doors for a few short days. The illustrator/author of the Dragon Ball Super manga, Toyotaro, was on hand as a guest for all things Dragon Ball Super. The team at Manga.tv caught up with Toyotaro-san to interview him about life and Dragon Ball.

The interview is conducted in Japanese, but there are English subtitles available via YouTube’s caption feature for English speakers and French subtitles embeded within the video for the target audience in France.

Toyotarō-san talks about working on Dragon Ball Super and how much the original creator of Dragon Ball (Akira Toriyama) and the series has influenced him. He is actually the chosen successor to Toriyama-sensei. Toyotarō-san discusses Dragon Ball was created by Toriyama-sensei not to convey any messages or values, but simply to provide entertainment. Any values received by the reader/viewer are from within themselves. Further, Toyotarō-san shares a little bit about his life, working under constant time constraints and pressure, and how he only sleeps 4 hours on days he has to draw the Dragon Ball Super manga.

Many fans often wonder why there are some differences between the Dragon Ball Super anime and manga and Toyotarō-san addresses this. He says there is no direct link between anime and manga and that the possibilities lead to discrepancies. He and the team behind the anime are basically given the story by Toriyama-sensei, but it is just a narrative outline. The specifics, such as dialogue, are not provided so he has to fill them in. Once given the story outline, he and the team behind the anime then work independently of the other, ultimately resulting in anime and manga being out-of-sync.